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No, this wasn’t written by me (un poco obvio, no?). But I honestly think that this poem is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever read, and no, that’s not because it expresses “my inner angst” (don’t think I have any). I studied John Clare very briefly last year, and I’ve since read more of his work (as should you), but this is one of my favourites. Enjoy.

I Am, by John Clare

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
And e’en the dearest—that I loved the best—
Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil’d or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.